The Internet is a worldwide, on-line computer network of computers connecting governments, companies, universities, and other networks and users. The Internet began in 1984 with funding from the U.S. government. Originally open only to government and university researchers, it is now open to anyone. The Internet and online information services provide electronic mail, conferencing, and chat services, as well as the ability to access remote computers for sending and retrieving files.
One of the most popular features of the Internet and On-line services is on-line "chat". Chat is informal communication among users of the Internet. The chat feature allows two or more people to converse by sending text messages back and forth through a "chat room" that is accessed via the on-line service. Only those connected to the on-line service can participate in the chat.
The Internet provides a relatively slow link between users of the network. Information is transmitted across the Internet in packets which are self-contained blocks of information containing data and control information. The transmitted information is split up into individual packets, transferred across a communications link, and then reassembled at the receiving end. Because the Internet is a packet-switched network, rather than a circuit-switched, network, and because the links between computers are often heavily loaded, the delay between sender and receiver can be quite large compared to instantaneous telephone or face-to-face conversation.
In view of this large delay, the social norm of speaking only during silence becomes difficult to maintain. When the receiver encounters silence, the sender may already be in the middle of composing or speaking a new sentence. This problem is compounded when attempting a multi-party conversation. Current Internet real-time audio programs do not address this problem of interrupting the speaker.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide a method of handling conversations over a slow medium that prevents one participant in a conversation from interrupting another participant. It is further desirable to implement such a method in a manner which prevents long periods of silence while an individual chat participant is speaking.